The most populous borough of New York, Brooklyn occupies 81 square miles (210 square km) to the east of Manhattan on the western fringe of Long Island. Sections of the area were first settled by the Dutch in the 1630s, and six largely agricultural towns—Brooklyn, Flatlands, Flatbush, New Utrecht, Bushwick, and Gravesend—soon thrived. Consolidated as Kings county in 1683, the region grew modestly as an appendage of Manhattan. During the American Revolution, Brooklyn was the scene of the Battle of Long Island (August 27, 1776). After the British occupied New York, their notorious prison ships were anchored in Wallabout Bay; a memorial to the thousands who died stands in Fort Greene Park. Early in the 19th century, Brooklyn became the world’s first modern commuter suburb, and Brooklyn Heights was transformed into a wealthy residential community. Modern-day entrepreneurs have restored ferry service across the East River, and the esplanade along the heights rewards visitors with an unrivaled view of Manhattan’s shore and skyline.

Brooklyn (c. 1900), detail of a map of New York City from the 10th edition of …

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An introduction to the Brooklyn Bridge, its history and construction, and its place in the …

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To the chagrin of New York, Brooklyn became an independent city in 1834 and soon adopted the grid form of street layout. By the 1880s it had about 20,000 industrial jobs and handled more waterborne tonnage than its rival; during the American Civil War the Monitor had been constructed at the Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint. Brooklyn had its own Academy of Music (1859) and Historical Society (1863) and, in Prospect Park (1870s), an urban green space that represented a more mature version of Olmsted’s vision across the river; it ranked among the largest cities in the country in the last four decades of the 19th century. However, the construction of John Roebling and Washington Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan (completed 1883) doomed its independent existence, as business interests craved closer ties to the metropolis. Overcoming the opposition of the local Democratic machine, Brooklyn accepted consolidation by a margin of only 277 votes and became a part of Greater New York in 1898.

Brooklyn Bridge at night, spanning the East River and connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan Island in …

Contemporary Brooklyn retains much of the independent character it displayed as an industrial city. It has its own shopping mecca (around Flatbush Avenue), a Civic Center, and even a Chinatown in Sunset Park. Additional access to Manhattan came with the construction of the Williamsburg (1903) and Manhattan (1909) bridges and later through Battery Tunnel (1950). In the 1920s full subway service was extended as far as Coney Island, and in 1931 the borough became home to New York’s first airport, Floyd Bennett Field (now part of Gateway National Recreation Area). Brooklyn had something that Manhattan could never match, a beloved baseball team, the Dodgers, playing in a wonderfully intimate ball park, Ebbets Field; many hearts were broken when the team decamped to California in 1957, and the field was subsequently demolished. Brooklyn remains famous for its multiplicity of houses of worship serving neighbourhoods as varied as Brighton Beach and Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge and Ridgewood, and Canarsie and Cobble Hill. Although the borough has many private homes, the majority of its people live in apartments, mammoth housing projects, or upgraded row housing. Bedford-Stuyvesant and Brownsville have some of the worst slums in New York, with blocks of burned-out and abandoned buildings. Tensions between African Americans and Hasidic Jews in the biracial area of Crown Heights led to a prolonged conflict in the 1990s, and their relationship has remained strained. On the other hand, careful use of landmark protection legislation has enabled several historic neighbourhoods to restore their viability. The originality of the borough is visible in the creation of new areas such as DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) and the revitalization of underused piers for shipping.

Queens county would constitute a major American city were it not a part of New York. Its 120 square miles (311 square km), more than one-third of the city, feature a primarily middle-class population owning private homes, although in such areas as Forest Hills apartments predominate. During colonial times a significant battle for religious freedom, the Flushing Remonstrance (1657), was fought in Queens; it was a first victory for the tolerance necessary in an urban centre. In the 19th century Queens had several racetracks and two shorelines that attracted the wealthy, and it served as the final resting place for deceased New Yorkers. Its Calvary Cemetery is still the largest in the nation, while 7,000 veterans of the American Civil War are buried in Cypress Hills on its border with Brooklyn. The Long Island Rail Road (1836), originally intended to shorten the trip from New York to the Boston ferry, traversed land that was largely agricultural. That situation changed after 1870 when what essentially were company towns were established by William Englehardt Steinway (pianos) and Conrad Poppenhusen (rubber); the later development of the Newtown Creek area brought heavy industry and drew many immigrant workers into the county.

Queens (c. 1900), detail of a map of New York City from the 10th edition of …

In 1894 the communities of western Queens endorsed the creation of Greater New York, but parts of its eastern territory ultimately became Nassau county. The borough grew rapidly once the Queensboro Bridge opened (1909) and the Long Island Rail Road was connected to Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station (1910), and subway service was established soon thereafter. A pleasing mix of the urban and the rural, Queens was the centre of the silent-film industry until displaced by Hollywood in the late 1920s. The growing borough had more than a million people even before it was lashed to the Bronx by three bridges and to Manhattan by the Midtown Tunnel (1940). Pioneer aviator Glenn Curtiss flew from Albany to New York City in a little less than three hours in 1910, thus issuing in the age of domestic aviation, and the flat, open spaces of Queens became popular for airfields. It became an international arrival centre when La Guardia Airport opened in 1939 and Idlewild International Airport in 1948, the latter subsequently renamed to honour President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Access to transportation and a lower-density population made Flushing Meadows in Queens a natural site for the two world’s fairs held in New York City in 1939–40 and 1964–65. The borough also annually hosts the United States Open Tennis Championships.

In a diverse and cosmopolitan city, Queens ranks as the most ethnically varied of all the boroughs. It is perhaps too simple to refer to Irish Woodside, Greek Astoria, Polish-Lithuanian Maspeth, or Italian Corona, but those groups do predominate. Vast numbers of Chinese, Koreans, and East Indians have transformed Flushing into the largest of New York’s three Asian centres and revived a once anemic local economy in the bargain. More than half of the city’s Latin Americans, from more than a dozen nations, live in Queens, and their restaurants and travel agencies dominate entire neighbourhoods. African Americans are more fully integrated in Queens than elsewhere in the metropolis, residing primarily in areas such as Hollis, Cambria Heights, St. Alban’s, and Springfield Gardens. The borough has no visible slum area, and its residents are united in rejecting low-income housing and high-rise apartments.

Staten Island

Geographically isolated at the juncture of Upper and Lower New York Bays, Staten Island is 5 miles (8 km) removed from Manhattan by ferry and a mile from Brooklyn across the Narrows. Its 60 square miles (155 square km) are still the least densely populated, most rural part of the city, even though it ranks as the fastest-growing county in the state. When the English conquered New York in 1664, they decided that Staten Island would remain part of that province despite its proximity to New Jersey. A century later, in 1776, British troops launched their conquest of the city from the island. After independence, Richmond borough (later Staten Island) held forts to protect access to New York, quarantine stations for sick immigrants, homes for aged seamen and orphans, and railroad terminals for Manhattan’s freight. When its voters chose to become part of the greater city, its population was slightly more than 65,000.

Staten Island (c. 1900), detail of a map of New York City from the 10th edition of …

After 1900 a civic centre and borough hall were constructed in St. George near the ferry ramps. Water-system real estate speculators attempted to start a boom when Richmond was connected to the city, but the prospect faded away once direct subway access failed to materialize. Until the 1930s the borough experienced slow industrial and population growth, and only after the Goethals (1928), Outerbridge Crossing (1928), and Bayonne (1931) bridges were built did stagnation cease. Construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (1964) finally opened the borough to rapid development and made it a functional part of city life. Truck farming has ended and factories have closed on the island, but borough residents have managed to retain the integrity of their nearly 3,000-acre (1,200-hectare) park, the Greenbelt, the largest such amenity in the metropolis.

Staten Island is the most homogeneous borough in New York; it has the lowest proportion of ethnic minorities and is the youngest and most politically conservative. Its politicians call the borough underserviced, its residents feel under attack by environmental pollutants from New Jersey, and everyone resents being home to New York’s largest garbage disposal site. A dumping area since 1948, the Fresh Kills site will ultimately reach an elevation of 500 feet (150 metres), the highest point on the East Coast. In 1990, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a reduction in borough power, Staten Islanders endorsed a move to study secession from New York to become an independent city.

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New York City is the largest city in the United States. It is one of the world’s great centers of culture and business. Its fast pace and constant activity earned it the nickname "the city that never sleeps."

Symbolically, if not geographically, New York City is at the center of things-the very definition of metropolis, or "mother city." It is the single place that most encompasses all the shades of the American experience. Located at the southernmost tip of New York State, New York City is situated where New York Bay and the Hudson, Harlem, and East rivers join. The latter two rivers are actually narrow straits linking Long Island Sound to the bay and the Hudson, which extends via the Erie Canal at Albany to the Great Lakes. Equidistant from Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., New York is the hub of the Eastern seaboard.